...never gonna happen. RL has always been better when you win the championship in a winner takes all battle against the second best team in the comp.

Here's a mad idea, what about some kind of handicap system to fully reward the final league placing of the teams?

Perhaps something like the lowest place team gives the highest placed team a start equal to the difference between the number of league points they have each accumulated over the season plus two?

So, using current league positions/points, 1st v 8th, Saints would get home advantage plus 14 points start from Hull (26 - 14 + 2) in the first round of the play offs.

That might make things a bit more interesting..........

Still not right though .

Simple. That's how sports work everywhere else in the English-speaking world. Australian leagues use playoffs to determine their champions. So do American ones, New Zealand ones and Canadian ones. So did English RL for most of its' history. Using playoffs to determine the champions rectified the bizarre scenario of naming a champion, then having playoffs for a secondary trophy (aka the Premiership). The fact is that English RL has always had playoffs, and under SL they put things right again. The Grand Final winner is the real champion in my eyes and always will be.

Ive seen lots of good games this season.

People who are knocking things are probably doing so because the sport is comparatively speaking at saturation point re tv coverage.

Certainly compared to the past when we were fed TV scraps and had to taste them like it was our last meal.

The only thing i will say is that the entertainment value will increase with more quality players in the league. Hopefully with the fine crop of young halves coming through in the league that will stir things up a bit.

I've personally never understood why this country has such an aversion to playoffs. Rugby Union fans hate them and Football fans won't even entertain the idea of having them. Many countries have at least one high profile championship game and until the SL introduced the Grand Final I felt that we were missing out.

Back on topic I don't think that having 8 teams has lead to any significant reduction in intensity compared to previous seasons. Teams in the top half of the table know that finishing in the top four will give them a better chance of reaching Old Trafford and the teams at the bottom know that they still have a hope of making the 8, and still theoretically having a chance of winning the SL title.

Would it really

The English have cup competitions, culminating in a final. Other countries, such as America, and Australia do not.

Cup competitions are to make the second half of the season more interesting for those teams not likely to win the league.

I dont think it would....what is the point in playing a game against a abetter team where you are already 14 points behind efore kick off?

Indeed

Its a mad scenario on the present set up, 8th place scrapes into the playoffs who might have won only 40% of there league games beating 1st place who have won 90% of there league games.

8th place become superleague champions play NRL champions get hammered out of sight, then we start changing the rules again.

Even madder would be having champions who, in the biggest game of the season, can't beat the team that scraped in 8th place only winning 40% of their league games. Some champions they'd be.

Surely that is exactly what we ARE trying to achieve

When the RFL achieve this scenario will they be called Champions Invertion.

Another scenario is a team in 1 st place has achieved this using all there best players and are totally exhausted.
8th place use a lot of loan players and second string players to scrape into the play off, they then start to use there best players for the playoffs and win the grand final easy.

Champions who lose in the grand final? It's not what I'm trying to achieve and is contrary to the rule that says the champions are the team who win in the grand final. The teams that don't make the play-offs or fail in the play-offs are not good enough to be the champions, they are the losers. I don't know why people struggle with such a simple concept.

We could make the play ofsf the top ten, then we won't have enough teams who are not good enough.

No , the aim is surely that any team finishing in the top eight can if they play to their full potential can and will win the GF and become the Champions

Like a big qualifying comp

That doesn't make any sense. The number of teams who are not good enough will always be one less than the number of teams in the competition. The teams that fail will be all of them except the champions.



Aye, and if they do they will be, rightfully, the champions.

Surely 1st place have played to there full potential and 8th place have failed.

So why give a failed team another chance in 4 play off games if they cant achieve it over 27 games.

Now if we talk about a top 3 where there is only 1 point difference and not say 16 points (8th place)......... now we are talking a quality competition.

Why were the play offs introduced into the RL competition ?

No cheating

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NO

Try again

Because there was a Yorkshire and Lancashire League running side by side with results compiled into a single table but with clubs having different fixture lists through the season (roughly.... everyone in your league home and away and some from the other of your ability)